• Full over-the-air syncing including calendars, contacts, and email (similar to Exchange)
• .Mac syncing on Windows
  

Nobody keeps a secret like AT&T, and by that I mean nobody keeps a secret quite so poorly. Boy Genius Report and other sites are talking up an internal Death Star memo that asks employees to hold down the fort during the June 15 - July 12 window. Vacations should be moved if possible, says management, and no additional vacations are being approved during that period.

Since AT&T pulled a similar Mr. Burns-esque maneuver last year prior to the iPhone launch, it's entirely reasonable to pin this year's lockdown on the arrival of the 3G iPhone after WWDC. It's probably not necessary to stake out your place in line just yet, unless you happen to be an elected official or have an injured knee from a previous iPhone queue. If you were planning an iPhone purchase in the next four weeks, however, this is some of the strongest evidence yet that you really should put your credit card down and think it through.

[via Techmeme]

• Various printing issues
• An issue with Safari bookmarks and .Mac Mail account has been resolved (I'll believe that when I see it)
• Issues with mounted Boot Camp volumes
• A crash within the Network Preference Pane

Our anonymous iControl tipster has returned and tells us that a new XMPP framework has been spotten in the latest iPhone firmware. XMPP refers to the open source standard developed by the Jabber community for instant messaging. Remember back in March when Apple announced it would support native instant messaging? In a nutshell, it looks like Apple's new iPhone-based chat will be built on Jabber/XMPP.

Unfortunately, we're told that this XMPP support remains in a private framework and will not be available to 3rd party SDK developers. Apple has made a strong commitment to sand-boxed development, allowing developers little access to the underlying OS and frameworks. Single-purpose apps like games should thrive in this development environment while less bounded utilities like social networking apps may struggle--or at least have to depend strongly on web-based servers.

An anonymous tipster tells TUAW that according to code found in the latest firmware release, Apple is working on a new iPhone application called iControl. Like Apple TV and other remote controllers, it would allow the iPhone to connect wirelessly to local iTunes libraries and browse through and play media from those sources.

TUAW is told that a media navigator will allow you to view videos, play podcasts, listen to music and even support shuffle playback. The screenshot shown here shows some of the localizable strings for the iPhone-based application. There's obviously no timeline for release, but since the SDK event back in February, it's been rumored that Apple would release some official iPhone apps of their own, and iControl might be the first.

Update: The data is so thin on the ground that it's hard to respond to readers who have asked whether this will be a "Back to my iTunes" application. Just having local Bonjour support wouldn't be all that useful. Apparently a screenshot of the bundle (not apparently a real application) here

Why is it that our big sister Engadget always snares the great pre-release tidbits? Doesn't anyone want to scoop to us? Sure, we're littler. Sure, we're less well known. But we're fan-bois to the bone. Cut us and we bleed rainbow (and now styled silver).

That aside, Ryan "Da Man" Block found a source who got an advanced look at this slick sexy purported advanced unit. It's black, it's sleek and it just oozes iPhone-y goodness. According to Ryan's source, it will have 3G, proper GPS, a cool black finish and a non-recessed headphone jack. Check out all the deets at Engadget.

And think of us next time some advanced technology just happens to cross your path, won't you?

Update: Some of our readers suggest this "Next Gen iPhone" might be just a slight bit, er, shall we say, "photoshopped"? For realz? Or fake? Let us know what you think in the comments.